Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A Fan in Press Row – Thoughts on Gophers vs. Mount St. Mary’s

“It was a feel good game,” said Tubby. He couldn’t have been more spot on with that comment. Everything seemed to go right for the Gophers last night.

Austin Hollins showed more signs that he is ready to be a nice outside compliment to our inside game. Rodney was aggressive taking the ball the bucket and even EE showed signs of being a serviceable backup with Ralph out due to a minor injury.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they did this against an inferior team in the Mounts. But hey, to have the team win by 29 (85-56) with their leading player only having 10 points and 9 rebounds, that’s a good sign.

Later on in the season however, if Trevor puts up that stat line, we might not be so lucky.

Either way, it was nice to see some of the role players and small minute guys shine. Andre Ingram for example; he had 5 points and 5 boards in 14 minutes of play. Not staggering numbers, but decent numbers.

Joe Coleman also had his best game of the young season racking up 10 points on 4-6 shooting and also grabbing 4 boards. If he can get those numbers in B1G play, that will be just fine.

The Non-Brothers, Austin and Andre, did their thing has well. Putting up 14 and 13 points respectively and only turned the ball over a combined two times in 40 minutes of play.

One guy that took a step back after a couple of nice games was Mav. I was expecting him to have his way with this team, but that wasn’t the case. He had 1 point, which came at the free throw line, in 16 minutes of play. He did however have 3 assists.

Overall, it was a good team game. Not one person stole the show either in a positive way or a negative way and they scored a run away win.

If I was to give the team a grade on this game it would be a B+. The free throw shooting (65%) and the three point shooting (33%) are what is keeping the grade from being an A. They did everything else well. They outrebounded the Mounts 32-20, caused 20 turnovers while only committing 8 of their own.

Things start to pick up now schedule wise the rest of the way. They start the Old Spice Classic against DePaul (2-0) at 1:30pm on Turkey Day. That should be a nice appetizer before your Thanksgiving feast. Happy Thanksgiving and GO GOPHERS!